n
pairs, each pair lashed together, with the stronger on the starboard
side, next to Fort Morgan.

The Confederates in Fort Morgan, and in the small and distant Fort
Powell on the other side, hardly reached a thousand men. Their force
afloat was also comparatively small: the ironclad ram _Tennessee_
and three side-wheeler gunboats. But the great strength of their
position and the many dangers to a hostile fleet combined to make
Farragut's attack a very serious operation, even with his four
monitors, eight screw sloops, and four smaller vessels. The Union
army, which took no part in this great attack, was over five thousand
strong, and lost only seven men in the land bombardment later on.

Farragut crossed the bar in the _Hartford_ at ten past six in the
morning with the young flood tide and a westerly breeze to blow
the smoke against Fort Morgan. All his ships ran up the Stars and
Stripes not only at the peak, as usual, but at each mast-head as
well. Farragut himself at first took post in the port main rigging.
But as the smoke of battle rose around him he climbed higher and
higher till he got close under the maintop, where a seaman, sent
up by Captain Drayton, lashed him on securely.

All went well amid the furious cannonade till the monitor _Tecumseh_,
taking the wrong side of the channel buoy in her anxiety to ram
the _Tennessee_, ran over the torpedoes, was horribly holed by the
explosion, and plunged headforemost to the bottom, her screw madly
whirling in the air. Nor was this the worst; for the _Tecumseh's_
mistake had thrown the other monitors out of their proper line-ahead,
athwart the wooden ships, which began to slow and swing about in
some confusion. The Confederates redoubled their fire. Ahead lay
the fatal torpedoes. For a moment Farragut could not decide whether
to risk an advance at all costs or to turn back beaten. He was
a very devout as well as a most determined man; and his simple
prayer, "O God, shall I go on?" seemed answered by the echo of
his soul, "Go on!" So on he went, not in unreflecting exaltation,
but in exaltation based on knowledge and on skill. Like Cromwell,
he might well have said, "Trust in the Lord and keep your powder
dry!" For he had done all that naval foresight could have done
to ensure success. And now, in one lightning flash of genius, he
reviewed the situation. He knew the torpedoes of his day were often
unreliable, that they exploded only on a special kind of shock,
that